|
TFP Town Hall: The Porn
Ladies and gentlemen, lets talk about porn. Here at the TFP, you have access to thousands of images, videos and other resources for sexual arousal. We all make use of the porn in many ways. Some only come to the TFP for the porn. Some ignore it completely and even wish I would shut off their access to it. Porn has been a part of the TFP since the beginning and it is without a doubt the major reason for its original rise to popularity. The porn is fun to look at and it always comes in handy. The single members appreciate it. Some couples make use of it. And then there are just as many people who wish it would go away. Lets talk!
My thoughts on the porn are conflicted. I use the TFP for many many things. The porn is one of the things that gets me through the day when I just need to see a pair of breasts on my iPhone. Its a convenient way to access such material without being bombarded with ads. I trust my site to not plant viruses or spyware on my computer. I've been exposed to lots of new material that turns me on and I develop new ways to enjoy myself. The TFP gets a lot of traffic from porn, and that traffic translates into a higher ranking on search engines, making it easy for both porn users to be converted into community members and for regular surfers to stumble upon the community.
Porn is not socially acceptable though. I put the TFP on my resume and I fear that it limits my potential job pool. I ask people to share the TFP with friends and family, but the second most popular excuse not to, behind the anonymity factor, is the porn. Paypal has killed 3 of my accounts because of the porn, preventing me from collecting donations online. I feel like the porn also limits the diversity of the crowd much the same way an NC-17 rating is financial death for a movie.
One misconception about the porn are that it gets more attention or priority than the actual community. The truth is that it is ultimately just a vehicle for traffic, search ranking, and added-value. Another misleading conception is that the porn costs us money. It used to cost us money, but the price of bandwidth nowadays means I get more than enough data transfer each month to handle 5 times the traffic we currently get without it costing a dollar more. I constantly debate with myself about potentially removing it from the site. We've tried to do many things; limiting access to senior members strangles and stagnates the content, limiting visibility to only registered members only confuses them because they didn't know it existed before. Completely removing the porn would instantly cut off many avenues of traffic.
I know many people think that the TFP can stand up on its own without the porn. The truth is that we can't kill our main avenue for traffic without building another. That part partially rests in the hands of those same people. If people linked to the TFP more on their blogs or on other forums, we wouldn't need a "crutch." If people worked their butt off to create original and interesting content for the board, we wouldn't need the sure-fire draw that porn provides. A lot of people say that the side has deteriorated, but when I look around, it's just me and a few other (very special) people who are posting original articles, expositions and features. If we want the TFP to be a remarkable place, we have to make it remarkable, we can't just wait for it to get there.
I want your opinions on what the porn means to you and what you think it means to the TFP. Do you want it to stay or do you think it should go? If you think it should go, what do you propose we do to make up for the loss in traffic? This isn't the only issue to be addressed regarding the TFP, but this particular discussion needs to happen.
|